This weekend, the leader of Libya’s governing National Transitional
Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, announced that the country was officially
“liberated.” After eight months of civil war, Sirte, the last loyalist
city and Col. Moammar Qaddafi’s hometown, fell to former rebel control
on Thursday. In the midst of chaotic fighting, NTC forces caught the
ex-Brother Leader hiding in a drainage pipe.

Grainy but graphic YouTube videos of Qaddafi’s capture show Libyan
fighters slapping, spitting and cursing their former despot. When
Qaddafi made it to Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, he was dead.
Conflicting reports on how exactly he was killed continue to circulate,
but an autopsy showed it was a bullet to the head. Libya’s new
leadership has said Qaddafi died in a crossfire, but most suspect he was
killed by his captors. That hasn’t stopped thousands from queuing to
see the mercurial leader’s body laid out on display in a storage cooler.

Jalil’s speech marked a way forward for the embattled country,
setting a timeline for national elections in 2012. But now, Libya’s new
leadership faces its newest challenge: disarming regional brigades and
convincing the citizenry to turn in their weapons.

To take down the Qaddafi military, former rebels formed makeshift
militias to clear large expanses of desert as well as urban blocks. In
order to pose a real threat to Qaddafi’s conventional force, men from
across the country ransacked regime weapons stockpiles and carted off
any arms they could find. They formed regional militias and modified old
weapons in innovative ways. Today, the weapons used to vanquish the
loyalist army are everywhere.

Former fighters brandishing AK-47s and FN FAL rifles are just the tip
of the iceberg. When I was in Libya in September, heavy weapons mounted
on trucks were all over the place. Weapons modification garages were
churning out new ideas and fixing their weapons for the final Sirte
offensive.

Former rebels took apart 14.5mm machine guns from Russian-designed
ZPU-4 antiaircraft weapons and mounted each one on a pickup truck. They
did the same with ZU-23mms, Soviet anti-aircraft twin-barreled
autocannons, and Grad multiple rocket launchers. They took 106mm
recoilless rifles and sawed off the truck cab to make space for the
cannon.